Hatch Project - Long Harbour Processing Plant

50,000 tpa nickel rounds.

5,000 tpa copper cathodes.

2,500 tpa cobalt rounds.

Challenges

Vale Newfoundland & Labrador Limited aimed to finish engineering and construction work on the processing plant in a timely manner to eliminate any impact of project schedule.
Any unfinished and problematic scope needed to be identified to reduce field engineering changes and rework.
The project also involved organizing and incorporating approximately one terabyte of existing data or deliverables into the phase 2 plan, including 43,800 engineering and vendor deliverables from over 350 vendor packages from an earlier project phase.

Collected site data through complete and detailed area walk-downs to assess the installation condition and status of each plant area.
Compiled and communicated collected site data using iPads and mobile data applications for “instant-office” connections with low dependency on IT infrastructure.
Used queryable 3D iModels in the field to determine unfinished or problematic scope, resulting in reduced field-engineering changes and rework.
The engineering and integrated-project teams collaborated to reduce deliverable milestones by two months, meeting an aggressive project recovery schedule, and reducing cost.

Met all major engineering milestones and the engineering project ran significantly under original budget.
Completed installation of the 2015 contract packages on schedule, with the remaining scope scheduled for completion in 2016.
Process design modifications made during project execution permitted a phased approach to construction and subsequent interim operations.
The engineering team modified design deliverables in a timely manner to eliminate any impact on the project schedule.